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So, I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I bought an entire collection. I just have never been able to justify it before. An entire collection of China Glaze or OPI can easily cost north of $50, and often I don’t really need or want all of the polishes. I love reading blogs or watching videos made by ladies who have purchased entire collections, but for me it just seems a little frivolous, especially since my little blog doesn’t actually generate any income. So how did I come to purchase an entire collection, then?

Well, we (my hubby and some other extended family members) had been putting in lots of long exhausting hours cleaning out a house for another family member. After several days of working, working, working, I ended up in a Christmas Tree Shops staring at the newest Wet n Wild collection called Spring into the Wild. The display still had all four of the polishes in it, and they were pretty… And they were only $1.79 each. That meant for under $8, I could get the entire collection. So I did. Seriously, aren’t they so pretty?

A day or so after I bought this collection at Christmas Tree Shops, I spotted it at Kmart. While I was there, I looked through Sinfull Colors, Sally Hansen, and Revlon for any duplicates (aka “dupes”) of these colors.

The four polishes are from left to right: Love Fest, Lay out in Lavender, Breeze on By, and Kiss My Mints.

Let’s start with Love Fest. This is just a lovely pastel pink. Next to the other polishes in the collection, it looks like it’s pretty warm toned, but when it’s on its own, I feel it’s almost cool toned. I’ll just say it’s a middle-of-the-road pastel pink. The formula is pretty sheer, though. What you’re looking at here is four coats. Yeah, I know. Ain’t nobody got time for that. It dries really glossy and it just looks so pretty once it’s on the nail, so I’ll probably suck it up and wear it anyway. I think I might attempt some jelly sandwiches with this one.

I have a ton of pink polishes (well, like 30) but I didn’t have any that were a really close match to this one. The closest that I could pull out of my collection was Wet n Wild – Tickled Pink, but as you can see, these polishes really aren’t that close at all.

At Kmart, however, I did find two dead-on dupes for Love Fest. Here’s Love Fest on the left, then in the Middle is Sally Hansen – Hard-Core Party in the middle, and Sally Hansen – Tickled Pink on the Right. (Yeah, both the Sally Hansen polish and the Wet n Wild Polish are called Tickled Pick. People need to come up with more clever names.) I picked up Hard-Core Party since it was only $.50, and I can definitely verify that these two are pretty much exactly the same.

Next we have Lay Out in Lavender. This one’s a stunner, right? It’s just so pretty! This is sort of a muted lavender. This polish was opaque in two coats. None of that four coat nonsense here.

When I first saw this polish, I thought it might be similar to China Glaze – Release from The Giver collection from a few years ago, and when you look at them in the bottle, they actually don’t look that different. Once I got the polish on the nail, it was clear that they were really different. Release is a gray polish that leans purple, and Lay Out in Lavender is a purple polish that leans gray.

Just for kicks, I also pulled out Broadway Nails – Easter Annie for comparison, but this polish is obviously much more pink with no hint of gray. I’m super happy to add Lay Out in Lavender to my collection since I really don’t have anything like it!

While I was at Kmart, I found a few polishes worth comparing to Lay Out in Lavender. The polish on the left was the closest match, and that is Sally Hansen Miracle Gel – All Chalked Up. All Chalked Up is just a tiny bit warmer than Lay out in Lavender, like it’s got a half a drop of yellow polish in the bottle. It’s still super close, though. The polish on the right is Sally Hansen – Lacey Lilac. Lacey Lilac is definitely more pink and it doesn’t have that hint of gray that Lay Out in Lavender has.

Next we have Breeze on By. This is a pretty periwinkle cream that was opaque in two coats. Another really beautiful color!

As soon as I saw this polish, I thought it looked exactly like Wear Skinny Jeans from last year’s Silver Lake Collection. As you can see, they are pretty darn close. The one difference is that Wear Skinny Jeans has a silver shimmer running through it, but since the shimmer doesn’t actually show up on your nail, that difference really doesn’t count for much. I threw in Sinful Colors – Sail La Vie for comparison as well. I have Breeze on my on my first finger, Wear Skinny Jeans on my middle finger, and Sail La Vie on my ring finger. As you can see, Breeze on By is a hint more purple than Wear Skinny Jeans, but if you already own Wear Skinny Jeans, I’d say you could skip picking up Breeze on By. Sail La Vie is obviously more blue than either of the Wet n Wild polishes. I’m sure that Essie – Bikini So Teeny is super similar as well, but I don’t own that one. I know it’s a classic Essie polish, but I seriously don’t need anymore periwinkle polish.

When I was at Kmart I found a few more polishes worth comparing to Breeze on By. The polish on the left is Sail La Vie, which I just threw in the picture for comparison’s sake. The next polish is Sally Hansen – Hard Bitten. This is a little less purple than Breeze on By, and it has a fine silver shimmer. I’m not sure if that shimmer actually shows up when you get it on your nails or not. Next is Sally Hansen – Babe Blue. Babe Blue also has a shimmer running through it. From images I’ve seen online of this polish, the shimmer just barely shows up. (Rant: Why is it so difficult to make a periwinkle polish with a shimmer that actually shows up? Am I missing something here? Nothing is more annoying than purchasing a polish and then not being able to get what you see in the bottle to show up on your nails.) Babe Blue is really close to Breeze on By, maybe just a hair more blue. I think it’s probably just about identical to Wet n Wild – Wear Skinny Jeans.

Now we come to our final – and maybe my favorite – polish of the of the collection: Kiss My Mints! This is the most beautifully perfect mint color ever! It’s not too green, not too blue. I just love it so much! This is perfect in two coats and it’s just so pretty!!!

I compared this to three other polishes in my collection. On my little finger is Wet n Wild – Tree Hugger from last year’s Silver Lake collection. This polish is obviously much greener. On my ring finger is Joe Fresh – Mint. (Whoa, such a creative name. My mind is blown!) This polish is also more green than Kiss My Mints and it has a bit of a dusty gray quality to it, also. On my first finger is China Glaze – For Audrey. I knew this polish wouldn’t be a match, but it felt to me like Kiss My Mints is the exact same hue as For Audrey, only a lighter tint. ( I had to check an art dictionary to make sure I was using “hue” and “tint” correctly.) Petty much that means that if you added white polish to For Audrey, I think you’d get Kiss My Mints.

At Kmart, I found a few polishes worth comparing to Kiss My Mints. The one on the left is Sally Hansen Miracle Gel – B Girl. This one is really close to Kiss My Mints, maybe just a hair darker. The polish on the right is Sally Hansen – Mint Sorbet, which is obviously much more green. I just figured it was worth comparing since it had the word “mint” in the name and it’s readily available.

So, Here are my final thoughts…

Skip buying Love Fest and pick up one of the Sally Hansen polishes if you really love this color. Nobody should be applying four coats of anything.

Lay Out in Lavender is really beautiful and different from most purple/lilac/lavender polishes that are out there. I think this is a good one to grab.

Breeze on By is definitely pretty and it has a good formula, but it’s hardly unique. Only pick this one up if you don’t have a periwinkle in your collection.

Kiss my Mints is awesome! The formula is great, and although there are a lot of mint green/teal/aqua/turquoise polishes out there, this exact shade is still pretty unique. If you’re only going to pick up one, I’d pick up this one.

Oh, and just one more thing. Breeze on By and Love Fest are super close to the Pantone colors of the year for 2016, Rose Quartz and Serenity. I’m sure that’s no accident.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far! Find me on instagram and Facebook!

I figure that if I get my monthly favorites posted within the first two weeks of the following month, they are not completely irrelevant yet. That’s my logic and I’m sticking to it.

The last few months have been extra super busy for me because of my work schedule, and I am itching for life to settle down so that I can get back to posting regularly. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, as I’ve been told my work schedule will go back to normal in a few week. Yay!

I did manage to come up with some favorites for the month of February. And I thought the would look nice in a star formation. Lets start at 12:00 and go clockwise….

At noon we have Wet n Wild Fergie – Going Platinum. This polish, is amazing! It’s a foil finish, so it has a little more sparkle that just a straight metallic polish. Also, metallic polishes tend to show brush strokes, but this doesn’t at all. It’s opaque in two easy coats.

Really, this is just a great polish. All of the stuff I just said also goes for Wet n Wild Fergie – Gold Album. Gold album has the exact same formula and finish. It’s just gold instead of platinum. (That last sentence was probably unnecessary.) Plus, they are only $3 per bottle! I don’t love all of the Wet n Wild Fergie polishes, but Going Platinum and Gold album are definite winners.

At 2:30 we have China Glaze – Thistle Do Nicely. This is from the 2014 spring collection, so it’ll be tough to find in stores. This is not a shockingly unique polish or anything. It’s just a really pretty neon coral. And while it’s not an eye-searing neon, it does do that cool thing where it looks like it’s glowing when the light is a little dim, like at dusk. With the brutal February we had in PA (and pretty much every other state east of the Rockies) I was itching for something that felt like springtime. This is a polish that just makes you feel happy inside when you wear it.

In this picture, I topped it with an shredded iridescent glitter which looks flaky-like. I added a matte top coat for extra fun.

At 5:00, is Fresh Paint – Honeydew. This polish is a lovely light minty, springtime-y cream polish. The formula is a tad on the thick side, but it’s almost a one-coater. One of the reasons that I’m really loving this polish right now is because it works well for water marbling. Someone on instagram (I can’t remember who, so I’m a little sad that I can’t give that instagramer proper credit) said that she had good success water marbling with Fresh Paint cream polishes, including Honeydew. Well, that gave me the inspiration I needed to take another stab at water marbling… She was right! I tested several fresh paint polishes and they all spread beautifully in the water and were easy to manipulate. I’m so happy about that! I hate using expensive polishes for water marbling, because I feel like so much is wasted. Fresh Paint polishes are always 3 for $5 at Five Below, so… that’s awesome.

At 7:30 we have LA Colors – Candy Sprinkles. This is such a fun polish! It’s a rarity for a cheapo line of polish to have a crelly polish with awesome glitter like this. I had been eyeballing this one for a little while before I finally picked it up. This polish is sort of versatile, too. You can do 2 or 3 coats of the polish on its own if you want a really dense glitter look, or you can just do one coat over pink or purple polish if you like your polish a little more sparse. Very fun, and totally worth the $1.5Pictured is two coats of Candy Sprinkles over one coat of a pinky-lavender polish.

At 10:00, we have this beauty. Such a classic. Sally Hansen – Pacific Blue original formula. And this picture is one coat. I know, it’s amazing. The nail polish world mourned when Sally Hansen reformulated this polish last summer, but I still see the occasional bottle of the original formulaon the shelf in drugstores. Really, I just saw one at the Rite Aid in Middletown, PA like, four hours ago. The new formula is a darker blue with a shimmer running through it. The original is just this perfect cream color. They both say “420 Pacific Blue” on the cap. Stupid, sneaky Sally Hansen, thinking we wouldn’t notice.

So, those are my February favorites. Do you have any of these polishes? What have you been loving lately? Thanks for reading, following, and liking both here and on instagram. You people are the greatest!

These were inspired by Mr Candii Pants, who actually is a miss, not a mister. Check her out on youtube and/or instagram. She does some of the coolest free hand nail art.

The base color for these was Fresh Paint – Firefly. It’s an almost-white-but-actually-a-pale-bluish-grey color. And it’s a one-coater! By the way, do you prefer “gray” or “grey”? I like “grey”. It just seems like a nicer, softer spelling.

I painted all of my purple ferns first, then blue (I think), and then green. It’s just way easier to do all of one color at a time, when possible. I used a shiny top coat, but I think these would have worked well with a matte top coat also.

Now onto a completely different subject: My untried polishes. Here they are:

Now, some of these are untried because I got them on clearance when they were out of season. Others are untried because… I don’t know. I don’t really have any good reasons. I decided that I really need to tackle this pile, so I’m going to make a good effort to reach for these polishes until they are all tried!

It’s a little tough to see, but I actually did a jelly sandwich with this polish. I was pleasantly surprised that the polish still looked blue in person instead of black. I didn’t love the formula though. I can’t quite pinpoint why I didn’t. It took a while to really dry, so my nails ended with some little marks in them. That irritates me like crazy.

I also tried Sally Hansen – 3K or More:

The sun came out for me, so I got a nice sparkly picture! This is a nude polish with a gold shimmer in it. I don’t know how I feel about this polish yet. I feel like it looks really pretty in the picture, but I don’t think this shade of nude looks the best with my really light skin. There’s a bit of a yellow undertone, and I generally do better with cooler shades. It’s growing on me, though. This is a good pallet cleansing polish. After wearing Echo Dark for a few days, I felt like I needed something a little more neutral. This polish might be a little hard to find. I got this in a clearance bin awhile ago.

Oh, can you tell my nails are shorter in the last picture? I had some nail peeling going on, so I just gave them all a chop before one just broke off.

Like this:

Did you know that white nails are a thing? Well, they are. I think they started showing up on the runway about 3 summers ago, so the time is about right for them to make their way here to Smalltown, USA.

White polish looks great with tan summer skin and it’s also makes a perfect blank canvas for all kinds of nail art. It’s also can help your sheer neon polishes look extra bright. White polish can be tricky, though. Light polishes can sometimes be sheer, and light colors seem less forgiving than darker ones when it’s not quite perfect on the nail. That’s why it’s important for every nail polish fan to own a good white polish.

I decided to do a little comparison between 6 different brands of nail polish, most of which have a pretty low price point. Here are the polishes I tested:

From left to right:

Wet n Wild – French White Creme, $1.00

Broadway Nails -Snow White, $1.00

NYC – French White Tip $1.00

Sinful Colors – Snow Me White, $2.00

Sally Hansen – White On, $2.50 – $3.00

Essie – Blanc, $7.00 – $9.00

For years I used the Wet n Wild white because well, it was cheap and easy to find in just about any store. I felt like the formula was okay, but not great. Then one day I found Essie Blanc on a good sale! I really thought it was going to be this amazingly wonderful stuff because it was regularly 8 times more expensive than my normal Wet n Wild. Sadly, that was not the case, but it did motivate me to go on a hunt to find a really good white polish.

Okay, less rambling and onto the results. For each of these polishes, my first finger has 1 coat, my middle finger has 2 coats, and my ring finger has 3 coats. Here we go:

Wet n Wild: With 2 coats, you can see that it’s still a little shear, but with 3 coats it’s pretty much opaque.

Broadway Nails: Pretty similar to Wet n Wild, but maybe a bit more sheer.

NYC: I think with two careful coats, this would be opaque. You can see on my middle finger near the cuticle that I had a little trouble with the polish pulling up and leaving a bald spot. Generally, that’s caused by going over the polish with the brush too many times, which causes the polish that is partially dry to pull up from the nail. I think if you are able to apply a coat of polish in 3 strokes, this polish will look good with only 2 coats.

Sinful Colors: This polish looked great in 2 coats! I did a third coat on my ring finger for consistency’s sake, but it really didn’t need it.

Sally Hansen: This one is my favorite! It was perfect in 2 coats, and a third coat actually made it a little too thick. Really, this is a smooth, perfect white polish.

Essie Blanc: This one really preforms about the same as the Broadway Nails polish. It’s really not that great and a rip-off for the price. And do you see the teeth marks on the cap? Yeah, I had a little trouble getting it opened this one time. Anyway, I disliked this polish enough that I used it to do a little Frankenpolishing.

So, in the end I really feel like the Sally Hansen polish is the bet polish of this lot, and at $3 or less, it won’t break the bank. If you can’t find the Sally Hansen or you want to save a buck, I don’t think you’ll be disappointing with the Sinful Colors polish. The other 4 polishes are just okay. They will work in a pinch, but they don’t really rock my world.

Have you tried any of these polishes? What’s your favorite? Have you tried any whites that aren’t on my list?

Today in Kmart, I spotted the new limited edition summer collection from Sally Hansen: Electric Summer. Apparently, this collection has been around for several weeks, but I somehow have managed not to see it until today. Anyway, here’s what the display looks like:

Sorry for the quick, crappy picture. While I was in Kmart, a massive thunderstorm was moving toward my house and I had wash on the line, so I was sort of hustling to get out of there.

My first thought (besides how wet my clothes on the line were going to get) was that they are very pretty colors, and it’s a nice change from the neon collections that pretty much every other brand puts out in the summer. My second thought was that some of the colors looked really similar to the colors in the regular Xtreme Wear line. So, I marched my self over to the regular line of polish and did a little comparison.

That’s Kelp Yourself from Electric Summer on the left, and Mint Sorbet on the Right. Mint Sorbet might be a little more yellow, than Kelp Yourself, but I say these are REALLY close.

That’s Wet Suit from Electric summer on the left and Breezy Blue on the right. Wet suit is a little bit darker, but again, these are really close.

That’s Water Orchid from Electric summer on the left and Lacey Lilac on the right. These two aren’t as close of a match as the other two, but they’re not so different either. I just notices something: the Xtream Wear logo is a little different on the Lacey Lilac label than on the other bottles. Must be an old bottle.

Really, Sally Hansen. I think you can be a little more creative next time. If your limited edition collections are going to feature colors that are so similar to colors in your regular line, at least put some shimmer in them, or make them a jelly formula or something.

Ultimately, I didn’t buy any of the Electric summer collection, because I didn’t feel like any of the colors was really new or exciting or unique. If I would have bought any of them, it would have totally been Floaties, the pretty peach color that is second from the right in the display… But I didn’t buy it, so I guess I didn’t love it that much.

Anyway, what do you think of this collection? Have you tried any of the colors?